To ensure that its studies are relevant to policy making, the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy (NBETPP) follows certain guidelines. These are discussed in the hope that they will make the work of NBETPP more understandable and useful. The first guideline is that to be policy relevant, research must take account of the concerns of policy formulators and reformulators, those who react to or reshape the policy. Research must take into account the full range of factors affecting a policy and lay out possibilities for action. A second guidelines is that studies of testing must describe in detail what actually takes place in testing programs to ensure that policymakers and those who implement policy have common starting points. The third guideline affirms that to be policy relevant, testing studies must generate realistic policy options for incremental change and present them along with policy alternatives. The fourth guideline indicates that research on testing policy must try to forecast the implications of policy options so that those who formulate, implement, and evaluate public policy programs will appreciate the dynamics of various policy alternatives. (SLD)